Checklist (and a short version for the impatient)

  • Commits:

    • Make commits of logical units.

    • Check for unnecessary whitespace with "git diff --check" before committing.

    • Commit using Unix line endings (check the settings around "crlf" in git-config(1)).

    • Do not check in commented out code or unneeded files.

    • The first line of the commit message should be a short description (50 characters is the soft limit, excluding ticket number(s)), and should skip the full stop.

    • Associate the issue in the message. The first line should include the issue number in the form "(#XXXX) Rest of message".

    • The body should provide a meaningful commit message, which:

    • uses the imperative, present tense: "change", not "changed" or "changes".

    • includes motivation for the change, and contrasts its implementation with the previous behavior.

    • Make sure that you have tests for the bug you are fixing, or feature you are adding.

    • Make sure the test suites passes after your commit: bundle exec rspec spec/acceptance More information on testing below

    • When introducing a new feature, make sure it is properly documented in the README.md

  • Submission:

    • Pre-requisites:

    • Sign the Contributor License Agreement

    • Make sure you have a GitHub account

    • Create a ticket, or watch the ticket you are patching for.

    • Preferred method:

    • Fork the repository on GitHub.

    • Push your changes to a topic branch in your fork of the repository. (the format ticket/1234-short_description_of_change is usually preferred for this project).

    • Submit a pull request to the repository in the puppetlabs organization.

The long version

  1. Make separate commits for logically separate changes.

    Please break your commits down into logically consistent units which include new or changed tests relevant to the rest of the change. The goal of doing this is to make the diff easier to read for whoever is reviewing your code. In general, the easier your diff is to read, the more likely someone will be happy to review it and get it into the code base.

    If you are going to refactor a piece of code, please do so as a separate commit from your feature or bug fix changes.

    We also really appreciate changes that include tests to make sure the bug is not re-introduced, and that the feature is not accidentally broken.

    Describe the technical detail of the change(s). If your description starts to get too long, that is a good sign that you probably need to split up your commit into more finely grained pieces.

    Commits which plainly describe the things which help reviewers check the patch and future developers understand the code are much more likely to be merged in with a minimum of bike-shedding or requested changes. Ideally, the commit message would include information, and be in a form suitable for inclusion in the release notes for the version of Puppet that includes them.

    Please also check that you are not introducing any trailing whitespace or other "whitespace errors". You can do this by running "git diff --check" on your changes before you commit.

  2. Sign the Contributor License Agreement

    Before we can accept your changes, we do need a signed Puppet Labs Contributor License Agreement (CLA).

    You can access the CLA via the Contributor License Agreement link

    If you have any questions about the CLA, please feel free to contact Puppet Labs via email at cla-submissions@puppetlabs.com.

  3. Sending your patches

    To submit your changes via a GitHub pull request, we highly recommend that you have them on a topic branch, instead of directly on "master". It makes things much easier to keep track of, especially if you decide to work on another thing before your first change is merged in.

    GitHub has some pretty good general documentation on using their site. They also have documentation on creating pull requests.

    In general, after pushing your topic branch up to your repository on GitHub, you can switch to the branch in the GitHub UI and click "Pull Request" towards the top of the page in order to open a pull request.

  4. Update the related GitHub issue.

    If there is a GitHub issue associated with the change you submitted, then you should update the ticket to include the location of your branch, along with any other commentary you may wish to make.

Testing

Getting Started

Our puppet modules provide Gemfiles which can tell a ruby package manager such as bundler what Ruby packages, or Gems, are required to build, develop, and test this software.

Please make sure you have bundler installed on your system, then use it to install all dependencies needed for this project, by running

% bundle install
Fetching gem metadata from https://rubygems.org/........
Fetching gem metadata from https://rubygems.org/..
Using rake (10.1.0)
Using builder (3.2.2)
-- 8><-- many more --><8 --
Using rspec-system-puppet (2.2.0)
Using serverspec (0.6.3)
Using rspec-system-serverspec (1.0.0)
Using bundler (1.3.5)
Your bundle is complete!
Use `bundle show [gemname]` to see where a bundled gem is installed.

NOTE some systems may require you to run this command with sudo.

If you already have those gems installed, make sure they are up-to-date:

% bundle update

With all dependencies in place and up-to-date we can now run the tests:

% rake spec

This will execute all the rspec tests tests under spec/defines, spec/classes, and so on. rspec tests may have the same kind of dependencies as the module they are testing. While the module defines in its Modulefile, rspec tests define them in .fixtures.yml.

Some puppet modules also come with beaker tests. These tests spin up a virtual machine under VirtualBox) with, controlling it with Vagrant to actually simulate scripted test scenarios. In order to run these, you will need both of those tools installed on your system.

You can run them by issuing the following command

% rake spec_clean
% rspec spec/acceptance

This will now download a pre-fabricated image configured in the default node-set, install puppet, copy this module and install its dependencies per spec/spec_helper_acceptance.rb and then run all the tests under spec/acceptance.

Writing Tests

XXX getting started writing tests.

If you have commit access to the repository

Even if you have commit access to the repository, you will still need to go through the process above, and have someone else review and merge in your changes. The rule is that all changes must be reviewed by a developer on the project (that did not write the code) to ensure that all changes go through a code review process.

Having someone other than the author of the topic branch recorded as performing the merge is the record that they performed the code review.

Additional Resources